In l911 a friend, Mary, and I went to Quimperlé in Brittany and stayed at a convent of Sacred Heart nuns. We were interested in the dances of the peasants and the lace caps they wore, and wanted to make collections of them.

We arrived some time in August on a Monday afternoon and were charmed with the old Château. If I remember rightly, the date over the entrance was 1519. It had a fine old garden bounded on one side by a river.

The abbess had given us rooms which led out of one another. My room was a little larger than that of my friend and had a fireplace in it; it also had two long windows from floor to ceiling, looking on to a paved courtyard. My friend's room also had two windows, one looking on to this courtyard and the other on to an orchard. Both rooms were barely furnished with small iron bedstead, small washstand, table, chair, only, and nothing on the floor. Mary's had no fireplace, but she had a small cupboard which contained shelves.

The convent was run as a boarding house and there were several English and Americans staying there. We retired to bed about nine o'clock according to the rules of the Convent, but were awakened some time after midnight by loud noises which sounded like the droppings of large lumps of coal in Mary's room. We both got up, lit our candles, and searched her room, but found nothing. Nothing else happened.

The next night the same noises occurred, and at the same time. For three nights we were disturbed in this manner and I often wonder why we did not go to the abbess about it. I suppose we were too nervous.

On Thursday we told our experiences to two Americans who were staying in the same house. They were highly amused and called us neurotic, imaginative creatures. They invited themselves to our rooms after the dinner at 6:30 and made a thorough search in both rooms for holes. Rats, they said, were the cause of the noises. Nothing, no hole, was found. It was after nine o'clock when they left, for they stayed some time, telling us amusing stories of their travels.

We went to bed an hour later, and I went to sleep immediately.

I was awakened by the three-quarters of an hour striking of a clock, and I said to myself, 'A quarter to something.' Getting up in bed, I saw sitting at my table and gazing at the fireplace a very old woman whose gnarled hands could be plainly seen in the brilliant moonlight. She was dressed in a homespun dress and had an apron of chequered plaid and a little cross-over shawl of the same material. She wore a cap that was strange to me, and I wondered from what town in Brittany she came, for the caps worn by the women in Quimperlé were quite different in shape.

And then the same clock struck the four quarters and then a loud one. 'One o'clock,' I said to myself. I was then afraid; a cold perspiration broke out over me, and I fell back in great fear.

In the morning we told the Americans what I had seen. "A waking dream" was their comment. Anyhow, the result was that we went to the abbess asking if we could leave on the morrow as we could not get enough practice in our French as there were so many English in the house. She very kindly gave us permission to leave the next day. That night, Friday, Mary brought her little bed into my room. And we heard nothing, saw nothing.

We left the next day, and went on to Pont l'Abbé, after promising to meet the Americans at Quimperlé in order to see a big Pardom.

A week later we met them, and they told us that they had discovered an old lady had died at a quarter to one in the Convent that Thursday on which I had seen, or dreamt that I saw, the old woman. They also told us that the old lady had occupied for many years the same rooms in which my friend and I had slept.

I found out afterwards that the inhabitants of Lamballe wore caps exactly the same shape as that worn by the old woman I saw, or dreamt that I saw, sitting in my room.

SOURCE: The Dream World by Rodolphe L. Megroz, p.211-213.

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